She chuckles, and I breathe in a sigh of relief that I’ve been able to distract her from the topic she was eager to discuss.
“I’m serious about Landon.”
Or maybe not.
“Can we not do this?” I ask as I start to walk away.
She doesn’t make a scene or grab my arm, but she does follow me out of the front door of the clubhouse.
“Lifelong friendships are important.”
“I’m well aware,” I tell her as I walk toward my car.
Leaving without saying goodbye to Dad will probably raise questions, but I’ll blame it on not feeling well. Gastric distress is always an easy cover up. No one wants to have an open conversation about diarrhea.
“You two will be in each other’s lives forever. There’s no sense in all of this negative energy surrounding the two of you.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I lie as I climb into my car. I hiss at the burn of the seats against my back. “See you at home.”
I drive away, leaving my stepmom standing in the parking lot with her arms crossed and a determined look on her face.
Landon and I are going to have to do better at concealing our dislike for each other and quickly. Sophia is a force to be reckoned with, and neither of us will benefit if she sticks her nose any further into our business.
Sophia is pushed from my mind as insidious thoughts of Keira and Landon together sneak in. I don’t go straight home. In an effort to ward off my self-diagnosed depression, I head to the park, a place Landon and I used to frequent when we were younger. I don’t know how many hours we spent lazily swinging back and forth.
When we were kids, we talked about how we’d fight dragons. At the time, that’s how we viewed the bad men our fathers both fought against—his with the club and mine with the police force. Little did we know those bad men were covered in flesh just like the two of us and not the slick scales of monsters. Landon cried the time he poked his nose into a conversation several of the Cerberus men were having that wasn’t meant for his ears. I cried too when he told me about the horrific things he discovered men were capable of doing to women. We argued that day, him certain that some demons were people. I couldn’t wrap my head around it as quickly. I didn’t have a mom growing up. She wasn’t willing to give up her lifestyle to parent, but I did have my dad and grandfather, not to mention all the incredible men at the clubhouse. I witnessed how those men treated women with courtesy and respect. Hurting women didn’t make any sense to me, but Landon was insistent, going so far as to punch me in the nose when I hinted that the men he overheard were liars.
When we were teens, we knew full well just how evil other people in the world could be. We’d watch the guys come back from work with wounds marring their skin and lost looks in their eyes, a little broken from what they witnessed. We chose to swing and talk about sports instead. Landon was the star, taking to baseball like he was born with a glove on his tiny fist. Baseball was never my thing. Landon was my thing, even before I knew the full extent of what that actually meant. So if Landon was playing baseball, then I was too. Thankfully, I was decent enough to keep making the same teams he did. Although he was awarded a scholarship to attend Lindell University, I was a walk-on to the team. I still spend more time on the bench than anything else.
I should’ve gone to the university in Las Cruces. It’s close enough to home for quick visits but just far enough away that I didn’t have to worry about Dad popping in unexpectedly. Still in the closet at the time, those aspects appealed to me.
Not following Landon to Texas would’ve raised a lot of questions, so I did what was expected despite the distance already firmly in place before the applications were filled out.
The empty swings dance in the gentle breeze, making a wave of sadness wash over me. So many hours with him were spent here, so many plans made, but one thing remained consistent with all of it. We were together. We fought dragons together. We played ball together. We discussed living side by side, him as a professional athlete, me as his manager, because let’s face it, I was never pro ball material.
“You don’t want kids?”
Landon scrunches his nose. “No fucking way, man. There are so many running around the clubhouse already.”
I smile at his response, knowing that the safety of the park is one of the few places he’s so willing to use foul language. He wouldn’t risk it at home because his dad would twist his ear off, not because he shouldn’t be cussing but because one of the women could hear it.